Business Analyst job description

Business analysis — Business Analyst
Runs the requirements work for a project or product area end to end.

RESPONSIBILITIES
- Model scenarios across several systems and user roles, and use them to find the gaps in a proposed solution before it is built.
- Define a realistic target state with the business and set out the gaps across people, process, data and technology, including external drivers such as regulation.
- Plan the analysis for a project you run so it suits how that project is delivered, whether scrum, kanban or waterfall.
- Build a stakeholder map for a project yourself, spot groups the brief left out, and plan how and when to involve each one.
- Uncover the real need behind a stated request, resolve contradictions between stakeholders, and spot unstated assumptions before they turn into defects.
- Run a small workshop with a clear agenda and a single team, keep it on topic, and end with agreed actions and owners.

REQUIREMENTS
- Experience at the Junior Business Analyst level (level 1 of 5) or equivalent

REQUIRED SKILLS
Elicitation
- Business Analysis Planning — You can plan the analysis for a project you run so it suits how that project is delivered, whether scrum, kanban or waterfall.
- Stakeholder Analysis and Mapping — You can build a stakeholder map for a project yourself, spot groups the brief left out, and plan how and when to involve each one.
- Requirements Elicitation — You can uncover the real need behind a stated request, resolve contradictions between stakeholders, and spot unstated assumptions before they turn into defects.
- Elicitation Workshop Facilitation — You can run a small workshop with a clear agenda and a single team, keep it on topic, and end with agreed actions and owners.

Requirements
- Business Requirements Documentation — You can structure requirements for a multi-team change, including shared non-functional needs such as security, and keep the set consistent as it evolves.
- User Story and Acceptance Criteria Writing — You can turn a complex feature into a coherent set of stories, cover edge cases and non-functional needs in the criteria, and settle questions in refinement.
- Use Case and Scenario Modeling — You can model scenarios across several systems and user roles, and use them to find the gaps in a proposed solution before it is built.
- Business Rules and Decision Analysis — You can capture the rules behind a process in a clear form such as a decision table, and check them against real examples with the people who apply them.
- Requirements Prioritization and Traceability — You can run a prioritization method such as MoSCoW (must have, should have, could have, won't have) with stakeholders, and trace each requirement on your project to its tests.

Process Analysis
- Process Modeling with BPMN — You can model end-to-end processes that cross departments and systems, choosing the level of detail each audience needs.
- Current-State and Gap Analysis — You can define a realistic target state with the business and set out the gaps across people, process, data and technology, including external drivers such as regulation.
- Root Cause Analysis — You can run a five-whys or fishbone session on a contained problem and get to a cause the team agrees is supported by evidence.
- Process Improvement Design — You can propose practical improvements to a single process, estimate what they save, and check them with the people who do the work.

Data Analysis
- SQL Data Investigation — You can write your own queries with joins, filters and aggregates to size a problem or check an assumption behind a requirement.
- Spreadsheet Data Analysis — You can build a reusable analysis workbook others can update, with clear inputs, checks and assumptions.
- Data Mapping and Entity Modeling — You can produce a data mapping for an integration or migration, including formats, transformations and what happens to bad data.
- Business Outcome and KPI Definition — You can turn the goals of a project into a few measurable outcomes with a baseline and a target, and check them with the sponsor.

Solution Delivery
- Low-Fidelity Mockups for Requirements — You can use quick mockups in conversations with users to confirm a requirement, and record what changed as a result.
- User Acceptance Testing Coordination — You can run UAT for a release spanning several teams or systems, and help the business decide whether open defects should block go-live.
- Solution Options and Vendor Evaluation — You can collect product information and pricing from vendors and set it out in a comparison someone else has designed.
- User Experience Insight Analysis — You can combine research, analytics and support evidence into one view of a user journey, and tie each pain point to the requirement it should drive.

Strategy & Change
- Cost-Benefit Analysis — You can build a simple cost-benefit comparison for a project's options, with the assumptions behind every figure stated.
- Change Impact Analysis — You can assess the impact of a change on each affected group and system, and record it in a form the delivery team can plan from.
- Business Capability Mapping — You can find where a project sits on an existing capability map when someone shows you the map.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can organize a small piece of work into steps, put them in a sensible order, and finish it by the date you agreed, raising problems before they cause a delay.
- Planning & Estimation — You can estimate your own work with reasonable accuracy and keep a steady enough pace that other people can plan around you.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can pick up a problem that has no obvious owner and make yourself accountable for it, including the parts nobody enjoys.
- Quality Focus — You can define what good enough means for a project, put checks in place to show it has been met, and hold work back when it falls short.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can break a large, ambiguous problem into pieces and weigh the options for each against the evidence.
- Domain Expertise — You can work confidently with the tools and methods your team uses daily, and you can explain how your work serves the team's goals.
- Continuous Learning — You can pick up an unfamiliar area fast enough to be useful in it, and you turn what you learned into something others can reuse.

Communication
- Communication — You can explain a complex topic to people with very different backgrounds, adjusting the detail to the audience without talking down to them.
- Collaboration — You can build working relationships beyond your own team and get things done through people who do not report to you.
- Writing & Documentation — You can write for a defined audience, whether a proposal, a policy, a report, or a decision record, and make the reasoning as clear as the conclusion.
- Stakeholder Management — You can identify who is affected by your work and keep them updated at a level of detail and a frequency that suits them.

Leadership
- Leadership — You can spot a problem and propose a way forward unprompted, and you take a small leading role such as running a working group.
- Mentoring — You can help someone new settle into your team's work, answer their questions patiently, and give feedback specific enough to act on.
- Strategic Thinking — You can connect your team's work to its goals and question a task that does not appear to serve them.